Mr Tesla

[Shamanistic]

There was a side conversation going on in this thread; http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=32638 and since it was starting to take away from the original focus of the topic I thought I'd make a separate topic about it.

For those of you who don't know Nikola Tesla is contributing a huge part to the fact that your sitting in front of a computer right now. He was an inventor who held well over 100 patents pertaining to radio, ac, flourescent lighting, robotics, logic circuits, generation of power from various different means and very interestingly wireless transmission of electrical power. He also claimed that he could obliterate a fleet of aircraft with his 'death ray' from a far distance, spoke of free energy for all people of mother Earth.

Heres a nice little account of him...from an altered state

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gOR91oentQ

A few things in there are a little incorrect but all in all it's a pretty good video

So if you've got something you want to say, ask, discuss about Mr Tesla and his inventions please go right ahead and post.

[IndianDreaming]

Fantastic thread idea Shamanistic!

spoke of free energy for all people of mother Earth.

 

I think it's important to qualify the 'free energy' statement. Tesla envisioned setting up generation stations at natural water falls, geothermal wells etc... then transmitting that power with minimal loss to any part of the globe. Quote: 'Men will succeed in attaching their machines to the very wheelwork of nature' - It's the efficient transmission of the 'natural' energy provided by mother natures weather cycles.

I think this one of the most beautiful and inspiring ideas ever. Perfectly achievable with current technology (even 100 years ago this could have been done) - but unfortunately, bashed down by JP Morgan and Mr Westinghouse because they already had commercial control of the 'wires' and charging for electricity.

[Shamanistic]

Got to love mother nature, the mistress above all masters! Thanks for making that a little more clear I probably should have put it in commas because it's not like that perpetual motion garbage I sometimes hear people come out with. That said though, it brings up an interesting part of my research into Tesla. Imagine you have a pendulum which has a definite frequency. Would energy remain constant if you could vary the mass on the pendulum at different periods on the cycle. Say when it is converting potential energy to kinetic there is more mass and when kinetic is being converted to potential there is less mass, you'd end up with a system where energy is not constant and thus the laws of thermodynamics don't apply in the normal sense, although you definitely cannot say we are creating energy from nothing. It would appear that energy appears from thin air when in the kinetic cycle and less when it's in the potential cycle. One could say that the conservation of energy has been violated but could it be that the law needs a slight amendment to account for non-linear systems such as the variable mass pendulum, perhaps energy which appears to come from nothing at one time must disappear at a later time or energy is conserved over time but not on a moment to moment basis, or perhaps it's conserved in space on a moment to moment basis but not over time or visa versa. Would it still count as energy conservation? Who knows, but now you may be able to see why I am so enthusiastic about working as an electrical engineer

You might think that it would be terribly difficult to design a variable mass however in an electrical system there is the property of inductance which is the electrical equivalent of the property of mass in a physical system and changes in inductance aren't necessarily proportional to mechanical energy required to change the said inductance. There is also the property of capacitance which is the electrical equivalent of a spring, a spring converts kinetic to potential in the same way that a mass can convert potential energy to kinetic. So what if capacitance changes over time as well as inductance, now my head is really hurting. This might be a little hard for people to swallow but I am fairly certain it can be done..or maybe this is just a result of your brain on lsd

I'd love to hear what others think about this idea.

[Change]

Random Real Life Story

A few months ago on a normal everyday Monday morning i was walking around a few Parks in my area cleaning up some rubbish getting things ready to mow ( I work casually in the parks and gardens of Newcastle )

When this random bus driver was standing out the front of his bus having a morning cigarette sparked up a conversation with me. It went something like this

Bus Driver- "Hey mate its a bloody shame all these kids don't pick up their rubbish their just out of control you should see the back set of my buss its covered with graffiti.... these kids just have no respect"

DTB- "Yeah man it would be great but at least its keeping me in a job"

Bus Driver- "lol thats true but soon we wont need jobs"

DTB- I look at him with a what do you mean sort of look.

Bus Driver- "Have you heard of Nikola Tesla"

DTB- "I think so... was he some sort of inventor"

Bus Driver- "Yeah thats the one, he was really ahead of his time, had all these great ideas about how to create free energy...... Ive been studying his work for a few years now, Next week im going on long service leave, this might sound crazy but im going to use Nikola Teslas designs to create my own source of energy and get off the grid.

DTB- My jaw drops i look at this dude like you have gotta be joking.

Bus Driver " Go home and look it up.... Nikola Tesla..... Free energy.... anyways im running late i might see you around another time "

and just like that he jumped back in his bus waved goodbye and drove away.

I haven't seen this guys since but everyday i wonder to myself has he done it yet.

[cactuscarl]

I just watched a doco on Nikola Tesla he was an amazing man way ahead of his time on par with Einstein. It also pointed out how f***ed humanity can be, his plan was free energy for the entire world. When a couple of investers (mentioned above) found out he wanted to give it away they basically black listed him stopping anyone investing in any of his work for the future. He was one of the most brilliant ppl of our time but couldn't get funding for his work just because he was more concerned about helping ppl than making profits. His research is also the basis of harrp or so iv heard

[IndianDreaming]

@Shamanistic

I'm imagining your concept like this:

- A bucket of water on the end of a string with a very small hole in the bottom

- When the swinging bucket is fully displaced (at the 'top' of its swing), you drop in a drop of water.

- When the bucket passes the equilibrium point (string vertical, bucket moving at maximum speed), a drop falls out the bottom

- Repeat

This is adding mass at the point the bucket starts to accelerate (max potential energy, zero kinetic), and removing it when it begins to decelerate (max kinetic, zero potential). This would definately work to keep the bucket (pendulum) going. But alas, it's not a closed system, because you're adding drops of water. If its in a closed system, then you're required to bring the drops that fall out the bottom back up to the top to drop in again - which would need the same energy given to the bucket in the first place to lift the drops again (assuming a friction free environemnt)...

@DTB - I think thats the case we were refering to, I think the bus driver misinterpreted the term 'free' as in beer - with 'extremely efficient and provided by nature' - Good on him though! Bloody lovely if more people were Tesla minded, the potential to change the planet is phenominal with his research.

*edit - Additional: If you popped the whole thing in a plastic bag, and used the sun to evaporate the water after it has dropped out the bottom and collects at the top when it condenses - you've made yourself a mini model planet earth!

Edited July 17, 2012 by IndianDreaming

[Shamanistic]

DTB: You live in Newcastle too? Good to see some more novocastrians lurking these ways. Even better that your familiar with Tesla. Perhaps all hope isn't lost for Newcastle Only problem with googling Nikola Tesla and free-energy is you see a whole lot of absolute non-sense which is probably a big reason why most scientists are skeptical of Tesla.

CC: Interesting that you should compare Tesla with Einstein because Tesla once described Relativity theory as 'a magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king ... its exponents are brilliant men but they are metaphysicists rather than scientists' If only there were more information as to just what he meant by that.

ID: Yes! That's an example of a system which exhibits the sort of characteristics I'm talking about however it is a physical system rather than an electrical which from my limited experimentation makes a world of difference. In a physical system the energy required to restore the mass or water droplets is equal to the energy obtained but in an electrical system this is not necessarily the case as the change of inductance or capacitance isn't proportional to the amount of energy you put in. Think of how much energy it takes to get conduction inside a flouro tube. Now if we coat the outside of the glass with a conductor since we have the conductive gas, the glass acting as a dielectric and then finally our conductive coating we have a capacitor which we can alter the capacitance value simply by oscillating the applied voltage above and below the gas ignition voltage. The capacitance would change very quickly and we aren't putting in very much work at all since we are only oscillating 10V above and below ignition voltage. Couple these capacitors up in parallel and you're starting to get quite a marked effect.

I also love how you called it an open system. Open systems are free to exchange energy with their environment and so the 2nd law doesn't apply because it's open not closed. How well versed is your maths skills? I have a fairly old (1930s) Russian paper which was recently translated into english which deals with this sort of oscillator. They claimed that one of the capacative machines self-destructed Anyway here is a link to the paper; http://bit.ly/NutX2X

[IndianDreaming]

@CactusCarl - There's an interesting quote from Tesla in "NIKOLA TESLA: Lecture before the New York academy of sciences - April 6, 1897" (also stated in the Wiki page for Tesla)

...the relativity theory, by the way, is much older than its present proponents. It was advanced over 200 years ago by my illustrious countryman Ruđer Bošković, the great philosopher, who, notwithstanding other and multifold obligations, wrote a thousand volumes of excellent literature on a vast variety of subjects. Bošković dealt with relativity, including the so-called time-space continuum

 

I hold Tesla in much higher regard than Einstein. Tesla seems to have had some true ingenuity and originality in his ideas, especially regarding the rotating magnetic field, and the bladeless turbine.

@Shamanistic - Very interesting. I've always thought of a capacitor like a water tank - but spring analogy works just as well.

With that in mind: If you're changing the conductivity of one side of the capacitor, you are indeed changing its capacitance, therefore by analogy you're changing the size of the tank - or the strength of the spring. But you are not changing 'the energy stored' in the capacitor - you are changing 'the amount of energy able to be stored in it'. If you went ahead and turned the fluoro tube on (increasing the capacitance of the 'fluoro capacitor'), and then charged the fluoro tube capacitor to its new maximum capacitance value - when you turned the fluoro tube off, you're instantly decreasing the capacitance, and you're now left with an excess charge. I assume the charge would be released into the conductive gas in the fluoro - which would cause it to flash brilliantly. If the charge was on the outside of the fluoro, the excess charge might even jump off the tube - like an electro magnetic pulse. Does this sound accurate? The description you gave of the Russian device exploding sounds like this excess charge - once the capacitance is reduced, it has to go somewhere, and in the case of the russian equipment (who knows how it was arranged) if the charge was excessive and surged though a resistive component, the 'rate of change' could be massive and easily explode a component.

What do you think? Does that sound feasible? Oh dear - Tesla conversations! - What have you done Shamanistic, I'll never shut up now...

[Zen Peddler]

If you want another interesting theorist try doing a search on orgone energy and cloud busting. William Burroughs credits this stuff as helping his opiate withdrawls.

[Zen Peddler]

If you want another interesting theorist try doing a search on orgone energy and cloud busting. William Burroughs credits this stuff as helping his opiate withdrawls.

[FancyPants]

I've known doodly-squat about this mysterious man Tesla... the more I read the more fascinated I become.

[Shamanistic]

ID: Yes! I do see a few things slightly different to how you are though, for example the effect of turning on and off of the plasma is not changing capacitance because the plasma conductivity is changing but because the surface area of the plate is changing. Capacitance doesn't depend on resistance. Also using the spring analogy we can say that the energy stored in the spring doesn't just depend on the spring constant but also the displacement (in our case voltage). I would imagine there would be some sort of hysteresis between changing the spring constant and the spring changing displacement so we are perhaps changing the energy although I'm not entirely sure on that one.

Now imagine two of those flouro variable cap setups so that one is high when the other is low and a load connected in between. As you decrease the capacitance the potential is increased causing a potential difference between the two (See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0n6xLdwaT0 for a good example of this, when the glass sheet goes in the electrostatic field in the electrometer decreases). The quicker the capacitance changes the higher rate of change of electrostatic flux otherwise known as charge and therefore the more power we see across the load.

 

Zen: I've read a little about Wilhelm Reich and orgone but didn't know thatWilliam Burroughs claimed it helped with opiate addiction so thank you, you learn something new everyday

 

 

 

FP: I said the same thing once, that was about 6 or 7 years ago and since then there hasn't been a day in my life where I haven't thought about Tesla concepts at least once..you've been warned

 

 

[IndianDreaming]

@Shamanistic - Very interesting! Looks like I'm going to have to brush up on my em theory - very true about the surface area of the cap making the difference, well noted. I'll have to grab my books when i get home and have a dig. I'm not sure what the end goal of your arrangement is trying to achieve. Isn't the total energy conserved because when the potential goes up the current goes down? Would be interesting to put a perforated perspex wheel in the gap and see the potential jiggle. Are you going to build a model to test your ideas? Innovation and invention comes from giving things a go!

@FancyPants - If you're interested, theres a really good and easy to read book called "The Man Who Invented the Twentieth Century: Nikola Tesla, forgotten genius of electricity" (ISBN 0747275882 : OCLC 40839685) by Robert Lomas detailing the life of Nikola Tesla. Lomas covers the times of the electric engineer in the United States and the inventors' work. This book focuses on how Tesla got screwed over along the course of his life, and is a really good timeline of his inventions and discoveries - and misfortunes.

If you're into some more detailled reading, seach for 'tesla patents' they're free and fantastic to read - once you get used the style of patent writing it's really fun to read them!

Some other really good reading on Tesla is his writings for magazines, the Marconi pre-hearing court transcripts (Tesla won and is credited with inventing radio well before Marconi), and all his publications for the New York academy of sciences. They're pretty easy to find as PDF's on the net. If i get time I'll post some links here.

Tesla rocks!!!

[Halcyon Daze]

Here's a cool song written about him. the interviewed the band on triple J who spoke about what an inspiration he was to them.

 

[Halcyon Daze]

Here's a better one

http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/media/s3134393.htm

[ThunderIdeal]

sorry to just jump into the conversation.

as a layperson i have doubts that tesla's claims were all realistic. is wireless transmission of electricity practical even today? i'm curious about the details if it is, eg, is the transmission aimed at a particular receiver?

i know that there is a big (big) copper dome at the top of a tower in some remote region of australia. that's how far he got when the investors cottoned on and pulled their funding. he spent his final days in america trying to raise money. there's a scene in a movie "the prestige" where tesla is trying to get investors using tesla coil demonstrations for their wow factor. edison has plants in the audience that sabotage the demonstration.

[Distracted]

I don't know how practical you'd consider this... but

 

[ThunderIdeal]

i've got a spinning top that lights up when it goes near the its powered base, now that i think of it.

it's pretty complex which is why i skipped most of the posts above, but i'm curious about the mechanism.

wouldn't that fluro light up in proximity to transmission cables? what else do we know/suspect about transmission cables, when humans spend too long in their proximity?

[Foo]

[CβL]

Regarding the fluoro-tube: I haven't read enough to be absolutely certain, but I don't see that you've conclusively shown it to do anything special (i.e. have energy it's not entitled to), and it sounds like it won't. The complications include adding charge to the device (this creates a direct path from the plasma inside to the outside conductor skin), the circuit will be something like an inductor (the ballast) in parallel with a capacitor, both connected at a node which is plasma arc, thus both circuits are coupled. If the arc was allowed to run forever, the capacitor would charge up, and the inductor would limit the current through the arc (this by itself is extremely wasteful, as the arc is constantly dissipating energy through ultraviolet photon emission). So anyway, assuming you then isolated the capacitor (switches at an optimal time), and then discharged it elsewhere - you still haven't gained anything, as the energy stored on the plates is approximately conserved.

I think you'll find that unless you can identify "whom" is losing net energy (in this capacitor system, I don't see who is "losing" other than the DC source, which counts from your "bottom line"), then you're treading on perpetual motion. I think they are probably duals.

[ThunderIdeal]

if that was in response to distracted's wireless fluro video, i think he was just showing that cables aren't necessary to send an electric charge somewhere.

i'm still curious about what difficulties are associated with it. there must be significant drawbacks because i don't see it in anything like common use.

[CβL]

No, it was to the other discussion. Wireless energy transferred that way is using high frequency electricity (then either electric fields, or magnetic fields), and the main difficulty has been efficiency (due to dispersion and dissipation during the actual transfer, and the high-frequency stepper also loses a bit). If you haven't checked out the wikipedia page, it's a nice place to start: http://en.wikipedia....energy_transfer

Another problem is airwave crowding. Soon legacy (low quality error correction capability) communication systems that compete for bandwidth will just stop working if air traffic continue to proliferate at the current rate. Cables (fibre optics) are awesome, because you can have a higher density of communication. It wouldn't be a problem if leakage could be controlled (it can't really at the moment).

Edited July 28, 2012 by CβL

[Foo]

You can buy "charge mats" for your phones. I dont have one but they seem to be wireless energy transfer and a micro scale. The Phone needs to be fitted with a reciever and then placed onto the pad.

[_e_]

hi guys,

great to see these kinds of discussions occurring.

you may find some interesting parallels between teslas work and the work being done by an Iranian nuclear physicist by the name of Keshe .

see: http://www.keshefoundation.org/en/ . we live in a very exciting time ! free the energy

[IndianDreaming]

@Eatfoo - The charging mats are working by inductive coupling. There'd be a coil in the mat and a coil in the adapter you plug into your phone. Both parts together effectively make a transformer. The alternating current in the 'mat' creates a magnetic field that extends probably a few cm's out around it. When you pop the adapter on the mat, the varying magnetic field induces a current in the coil of the adapter. With the appropriate number of turns in each coil, the voltage/current can be controlled in the adapter to provide the power to the phone.

Theres a bit of info on that sort of thing here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonant_inductive_coupling

Tesla's 'art of wireless' is actually enegry transfer using 1 wire. That single wire - is the earth. If you use a resonant transformer to generate the electrical characteristics required to get the electricity into the earth (low frequency, high voltage, high current), then you can imagine the entire earth acting like the 'mat' from the charger you mentioned above.

The only reason the 'mat' has a coil is to increase the number of magnetic lines that influence the adapter. You could use a single wire if the voltage/current/freqency of the electricity was enough to generate the same magnitued of magnetic field in the adapter.

This was Teslas dream, to be able to simply wind a coil of wire in your hands, attach it to an approprate capacitance, and it would resonate with the frequency imposed on the earth by the transmitter. Thereby allowing you to pick up the energy of the transmitter from anywhere on the planet.

If energy is sent into the air as waves - they propagate out in all directions and only a very small fraction of the energy is recoverable in the reciever. Even though this method is wireless, its wasteful, inefficient, and suffers from exponential drop off at a distance. Tesla's method would lose less than 1% of the total energy - eg, you're recovering 99% He states in his Colorado springs notes that it only takes 200 horespower to get the earth resonating - everything else after that 200 horespower is there to be used with over 99% efficiency. - It's magical